Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

by Karen Abbott

  The servant told the men they were not welcome and closed the door.

  Earlier that evening, just hours before the great escape, Elizabeth donned her usual disguise: a “coarse” homespun dress and sunbonnet, a basket of cakes on her arm, and cotton stuffed in her cheeks. She rode, unrecognized, to a farmhouse on the outskirts of Richmond, where a Unionist family was hiding her brother John. As she feared might happen, he’d been drafted by Confederate authorities. John had officially deserted, a status punishable by death.

  In the South, where the Confederate army was loath to execute potential soldiers, public humiliation and torture were the preferred penalties for deserters. Some were forced to wear boards imprinted with the word coward, or were branded on the cheek with the letter D. Others suffered the brutal practice of “bucking,” being bound in a contorted position and left that way for days. Desperate, Jefferson Davis begged the women of the South to shame deserters into returning to the army. Despite the potential consequences and the president’s pleas, desertion continued unabated. Some men, propelled by a desire to leave “this one horse barefooted naked famine stricken Southern Confederacy,” went over to the enemy and took an oath of allegiance to the United States. John hoped to evade Confederate detectives and join them.

  When Elizabeth arrived at the farmhouse, she embraced her brother and sat up with him for hours, talking to the point of exhaustion. She went to bed, lying just a few feet away from the farmer’s wife, who rocked back and forth in her chair, puffing on her pipe, blowing curlicues of sweet smoke. For hours Elizabeth tossed and turned, afflicted by some strange nervousness she couldn’t quite name. In the morning, when a servant arrived with supplies for John’s trip north, he mentioned the escapees that had been refused at the door. Elizabeth wept, “greatly distressed” that she hadn’t been able to offer the prisoners refuge.

  She was even more concerned about John’s welfare. Now her brother had to give up all hope of fleeing to Union lines, since the streets would be teeming with Confederate detectives searching for the escapees. She told John to stay put, resumed her disguise, and quickly rushed back home. Turning onto Grace Street, she saw a chain of guards posted around the perimeter of the mansion. She spat the cotton from her mouth and approached the door. They parted, giving way, and she smiled at them as she let herself in.

  Desperate situations sometimes require despicable remedies, she thought, and changed clothing, trading her homespun frock for a more dignified day dress in a lightweight worsted wool. She set out for provost marshal John Winder’s new office on Broad Street, weaving through cavalrymen patrolling the streets in somber pairs.

  Winder took the matter of desertion seriously, combing the hospitals for stragglers and issuing public appeals for help (he was especially pleased when a fourteen-year-old boy apprehended a deserter and brought him in, giving the kid $30 and a job as a messenger). Depending on his mood, he had the power to help Elizabeth’s brother or deliver him straight to the front lines. To her relief he received her kindly, inviting her to sit down and asking how he might help. Neither of them mentioned the day his detectives almost found the secret room in her home.

  She offered a selective version of the truth, admitting that her brother had deserted but insisting he had done so only because he suffered from a painful and debilitating injury. She hoped, as she spoke, that Winder wasn’t aware of the report by the Confederate army doctor who had examined John, conceding that he was “of a delicate appearance” but concluding nonetheless that he was fit for active duty.

  Winder ran a hand through his wild white thatch of hair, the hair Elizabeth once suggested belonged in the Temple of Janus, and said, “Bring him to me tomorrow morning and I will do what I can for him.”

  Rising, she placed her hand over her heart and thanked the general. She prayed that his words weren’t setting another trap.

  He stopped her and suggested he might be able to do her another favor. He understood that she was being harassed, that certain characters had made threats against her home and family and person, threats that had only escalated since the beginning of the war. If she were amenable he could board temporarily at her home, keeping a very close watch on her. She would be doing him a favor, too; his wife had fled the volatility of Richmond to live with relatives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and now he was all alone.

  Elizabeth knew his primary intent was to spy on her, but she had to tell him yes.

  THE SANCTUARY OF A MODEST GIRL

  RICHMOND AND EN ROUTE TO EUROPE

  After the death of her father Belle longed to return to Martinsburg, even just for a visit, and launched a campaign to convince the Federal government to lift her banishment from Northern territory. Several Southern senators petitioned Washington on her behalf, and she herself wrote letters to Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton, appealing to them as the daughter of a brother Mason. Not one of them responded. Next she tried Ward Hill Lamon, the bodyguard of Lincoln’s and old family friend who had helped her back in 1861, after she was caught spying for the first time. “You knew my Father, my Mother, & you know me,” she wrote. “For god’s sake use your influence (for I know you have it) with Mr. Lincoln, for me to return to ma. I know she is nearly broken hearted. Relieve my grief. My father dead. My Mother, nearly wild with grief & I an exile. Oh, God! ’tis too hard. I pray you will listen to my entreaties. Anser [sic] soon.”

  Ultimately Belle was not permitted to go home. Instead she decided to travel as far away as possible, following Rose Greenhow’s path and running the blockade to Europe. She told the press of her plans, and was gratified by the prediction that she would receive “great attention as one of the heroines of the war.” She did not mention that she’d sent a note to Jefferson Davis offering to carry Confederate dispatches to England, and now she sat in her room at the Spotswood Hotel, awaiting his reply. The president’s approval would confirm her value to the cause, elevating her even in the minds of those who still dismissed her as an “accomplished prostitute” or, even worse, “absurd.”

  A knock at the door announced the arrival of a clerk from the State Department, bearing $500 in gold to cover her expenses, letters of introduction signed by Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin, and several dispatches to British officials, the contents of which Belle never divulged. When she arrived in London, she was to report to Henry Hotze, a Swiss-born Southern sympathizer serving as a Confederate propagandist and commercial agent. She invented an alias, “Mrs. Lewis,” and created a pretext for her mission: she was traveling as a private citizen who was suffering from ill health and needed to recuperate. True, her face and figure were as recognizable as her name, but the precaution still gave her a small measure of security. A civilian passenger caught on a contraband-carrying ship would most likely be detained as a witness for court proceedings and not as a prisoner of war, but a Confederate courier could expect to be treated only as an active foe.

  On a Sunday evening in March, at dusk, Belle departed Richmond and took the train to Wilmington. There she boarded a steamer named the Greyhound—a striking vessel, she thought: a brand-new, three-masted propeller, its dark lead hull brightened by a sleek red streak. At the mouth of the Cape Fear River they dropped anchor, waiting to push off until the moon disappeared. Outside the bar, about six miles in the distance, she saw vessels from the Federal fleet cruising in quiet, inquisitive circles. She batted away her fear, focusing instead on the importance of her mission. She was comforted, too, by the ship’s commander, Captain George H. Bier, a former US naval officer who had switched sides to serve with Stonewall Jackson. He also used a pseudonym, “Captain Henry.” He had known her father and would take good care of her. She told him she had gold coins concealed all about her person and offered to similarly conceal his. They showed each other their scars.

  The Greyhound idled off the coast at Fort Fisher, waiting while the Confederate Signal Corps blinked lights in sliding boxes, revealing the location of channels. Belle acquainted herself with the other civ
ilian passengers, among them Mr. Pollard, the esteemed editor of the Richmond Examiner. He had also taken an alias, “E. A. Parkinson,” and was gallant enough to call her Mrs. Lewis, although she couldn’t imagine he didn’t know her true identity. The ship’s crew began a routine search and discovered four stowaways, all of them fugitive deserters who were told to choose between returning to the Confederate army or being tossed overboard.

  Around 10:00 p.m. Captain Henry changed into a black suit. Every light was extinguished, every word spoken in a whisper. The anchor was raised and the ship glided off. Belle caught the captain’s muffled commands of “Steady” and, more frantically, “Cut off your smoke!” She made her way to the deck, which was piled high with cotton, young officers perched on the tallest bales to keep watch for the Yankees. Her body, pulled by the weight of the gold, rocked with the rise and dip of the waves. Silently she prayed. No one considered sleep. The dread of capture stretched through the night, ending, at last, when the sun rose to reveal no enemy sail in sight.

  Her relief gave way to seasickness, and Belle retched over the side of the deck. As soon as she lifted her head she saw a Union ship named the Connecticut bearing rapidly down, and heard the startled cry of the lookout: “Sail ho!” The Greyhound picked up speed, slicing through the water, but the enemy ship closed the distance foot by foot, her masts rising higher and higher, her hull looming larger and larger. Belle sifted through a tumble of thoughts: “Unless Providence interposes directly in our behalf, we shall be overhauled and captured; and then what follows? I shall suffer a third rigorous imprisonment . . . and every kind of indignity.” The chase continued, the Yankee ship gaining. She knew what was coming, and she held her breath, waiting for it: the thin white curl of smoke spiraling through the air, the horrifying hiss of the shell, the deep, slushy report of its explosion underwater.

  The crewmen began rolling bale after bale of cotton and heaving them overboard. “By damn!” one called. “There’s another they shall not get.” Captain Henry, revolver in hand, reminded them that he was the master of the vessel and ordered them back to the wheel. Belle watched the shots come faster now, too fast to count, pocking the surface of the sea or bursting high like falling stars; all of them seemed aimed directly at her. Captain Henry paced and checked his compass and screamed, “More steam! More steam! Give her more steam!” He spun around and clutched Belle’s arm.

  “Miss Belle,” he said, “I declare to you that, but for your presence on board, I would burn her to the water’s edge rather than those infernal scoundrels should reap the benefit of a single bale of our cargo.”

  Belle straightened and stripped her face of expression; she was as much of a soldier as everyone else on this ship. “Captain Henry,” she replied, screaming over the clamor in the sky, “act without reference to me—do what you think your duty. For my part, sir, I concur with you. Burn her by all means—I am not afraid. I have made up my mind, and am indifferent to my fate, if only the Federals do not get the vessel.”

  The crewmen were still lobbing bales of cotton and other valuable cargo out to sea: barrels of tobacco and medicinal turpentine, used both for whooping cough and as a diuretic; a keg containing around $30,000; fat packages of Confederate bonds. Mr. Pollard hurled items from a letter satchel, until the white waves were dancing with ambrotypes and souvenirs. Belle found the engine room below, and emptied her bodice, skirts, and purse of all government dispatches, threw them into the firebox, and watched them curl into themselves and vanish. She tossed in everything but the gold coins on her body and the pistol in her belt.

  She hurried back to the deck and heard the captain’s resigned shout: “It is too late to burn her now. The Yankee is almost on board of us. We must surrender!” The engine gasped to a stop. Belle heard a low, dense humming and looked up to see a missile sear the air above her head. “By Jove!” the captain shouted to no one in particular. “Don’t they intend to give us quarter, or show us some mercy at any rate? I have surrendered.”

  A voice boomed over from the enemy ship: “Steamer ahoy! Haul down that flag, or we will pour a broadside into you!”

  Captain Henry nodded and the flag made a jerky descent. Small boats coasted in all directions, carrying crewmen dressed in pristine uniforms of gold and blue. The Yankee officers climbed aboard the Greyhound in an orderly flurry, and their captain, Lieutenant Louis Kempff, sauntered over to Captain Henry. Belle stood in the doorway of her cabin, close enough to listen to their conversation.

  “Good day to you, Captain,” Kempff said. “I am glad to see you. This is a very fine vessel, and a valuable one. Will you be good enough to let me see your papers?”

  “Good day to yourself, sir, but as to my being happy to see you, I cannot really say that I am. I have no papers.”

  Kempff led Henry onboard the Federal ship, leaving an ensign, William M. Swasey, in charge of the Greyhound. He wore lavender kid gloves and used his fingers to smooth his greasy, center-parted hair. Belle loathed him on sight, drawing a silent conclusion: “An officer as unfit for authority as any who has ever trodden the decks of a man-of-war.” He caught her eye and seemed to intuit a threat.

  “Sergeant of the guard!” he called. “Put a man in front of this door, and give him orders to stab this woman if she dares come out.” He took a step closer to Belle and said, “Now, ain’t ye skeared?”

  She reared up on her toes. “No, I am not. I was never frightened at a Yankee in my life!”

  Swasey seemed surprised by this response. The Yankee sailors invited themselves into Belle’s cabin, a brazen transgression that surprised her; she had hoped her quarters “would have been respected as the sanctuary of a modest girl.” One approached her and said with studied insolence: “Do you know that it was I who fired the shot that passed close over your head?”

  “Was it?” Belle asked, head tilted, hand on hip. “Should you like to know what I said of the gunner?”

  The officer nodded. “I should like to know.”

  “That man, whoever he may be, is an arrant coward to fire on a defenseless ship after her surrender.”

  He stared at her, but her eye was drawn to another Union officer who had just dropped over the side of the ship, crossing the deck by the wheel. Everything about him was immediately and inexplicably significant—she hadn’t been this riveted by a man since her late, beloved Stonewall Jackson—and she composed a mental file, marking the way his dark hair swept his shoulders, the eerie brilliance of his large and bright eyes. He was not “strictly handsome,” she acknowledged to herself, and “neither Phidias nor Praxiteles would have chosen the subject for a model of Grecian grace,” but he moved like a refined gentleman, a refined Southern gentleman, and she felt her rebel proclivities relax and fall away, like a corset undone: “Oh,” she thought, “what a good fellow that must be.” She forgot every previous flirtation with a Union soldier, making room in her mind for what was to come.

  To Belle’s dismay he passed by her cabin without inquiring about her, and so she took the initiative, turning to an officer standing nearby.

  “What is the name of the new arrival in this party of pleasure?” she asked.

  “Lieutenant Hardinge,” he replied.

  She repeated the name to herself, taking turns stressing different syllables, turning it into a private refrain. He came back into view, approaching the disagreeable Ensign Swasey. She angled closer, eager to hear their conversation, or even just the sound of Hardinge’s voice.

  “Hallo, Hardinge, anything up?” Swasey asked. “What is it?”

  “Yes sir,” Hardinge said, and told him that by order of Captain Almy, the commanding officer of the Connecticut, he had come to relieve him of the command of this vessel.

  As soon as Swasey left, Hardinge, now in charge, summoned all of the men from Belle’s cabin. He stepped closer, filling her doorway, propping his hands on the frame. She realized she didn’t even yet know his full name. He bowed deeply, letting fall the long brown fringe of hair. She found sly,
secret meanings beneath his words—“I am now in command of this vessel, and I beg you will consider yourself a passenger, not a prisoner”—and she couldn’t consent fast enough when he asked permission to enter her room.

  YOU ARE VERY POOR COMPANY

  PARIS AND LONDON

  For once Rose exercised caution in her affairs. There would be no stack of illicit love letters left for detectives to find, no whispers about late-night callers or torrid flirtations with married men.

  Her primary and most public suitor was Granville George Leveson-Gower, leader of the House of Lords and a widower. He was eager to wed again and had fixed on Rose, escorting her to balls and parties and debating with her about the war, a pastime she enjoyed despite his troubling positions. Two years earlier, he had written a widely circulated memorandum—one that was said to have influenced the prime minister, Lord Palmerston—against intervention, arguing that recognition “would not by itself remove the blockade” or supply England with cotton and would mostly serve to stimulate the North. Rose believed that only she could change Lord Granville’s mind.

  “Our people earnestly desire recognition,” she reminded him one night. “The opinion of a nation who had showed such wonderful capacity for resistance and self-government was entitled to grave consideration.”

  They continued the conversation behind the closed doors of her carriage.

  But she was more focused on work than romance, shuttling between Paris and London, suffering from seasickness and la grippe, as the French called it, her heart breaking every time she had to leave Little Rose. “Took my child back to the convent and left her sobbing bitterly,” she wrote. “It was a heavy trial to say goodbye. God bless her. My heart is very sad.” News from home depressed her further. While Lee’s army bided its time in winter quarters in Virginia, waiting for spring to break, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman tore through the South, capturing Meridian, Mississippi, and destroying depots, railroads, bridges, locomotives, storefronts, arsenals, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments until the city ceased to exist. It didn’t help, either, that her efforts were often wasted on daft and senseless people, such as Edward George Stanley, fourteenth Lord Derby, who “showed that he was utterly ignorant of everything, save that we had once formed a part of the old United States.” (Her opinion was somewhat rectified when he deemed Rose “the best diplomatist I have ever seen.”)